Favourite Roses

Rosa 'Graham Thomas' has just been voted the world's favourite rose at the 2009 Wold Rose Convention in Vancouver. It is beautiful.

I am not especially fond of roses grown as shrubs, although a hedge of shrub roses such as Rosa 'Hyde Hall' can look stunning. What I really hate are those dreary rose gardens where badly pruned, disease riddled, sad looking specimens are grown alone without the interest of other surrounding plants. Horrid!

However, I am very fond of climbing roses. Trained over an arch or pergola, grown up trellis, and, of course, around a front door they look fabulous. Roses can be combined with other climbing plants so that when they're not flowering you still get colour and scent.

I recently constructed a pergola in my mother's garden, with the help of my brother and his hard-working kids - my newphews and niece. I planted it up with a mixture of climbers, but my Mum loves roses, so we planted a different one on each pergola post. This was the first time I'd used Graham Thomas and it has been amazing - by far the most flowers of all the others in its first season, and a really pretty yellow. I also used some of my other favourite climbing roses, all David Austen:-

Falstaff - a blowsy, double deep, rich red with an amazing fragrance.
Crown Princess Margarets - double flowered, apricot orange, very fragrant.
A Shopshire Lad - peachy pink, very scented.
Iceberg - white climber with a light scent.